Author's Note: The previous chapter was out of order, unfortunately, but this one picks up directly after chapter thirteen.

To Mould A Man From Clay

Chapter Fifteen

Jirax knows there's something wrong with this ship, the Tyrant. He can sense it in his head, feel it tight in his chest. His throat aches, as if an invisible hand is squeezing just enough to make him breathless. His armor seems heavier, and it feels like someone added weights onto his shoulders. Either way, the superstition doesn't wear off. He walks through the hangar deck, boots clanking against the ground, and no boarding party greets him.

The ship's abandoned, he wonders as he exits the hangar deck and starts to wander the halls, keeping his eyes and ears open to even the slightest bit of movement or the faintest noise.

Jirax's senses, his instincts, tell him to turn back and walk away—no, to run, run, run, run, as if there are warning signs flashing before his eyes at every turn. Too stubborn to even obey his subconscious or his own unsettling suspicion.

You've grown far too trusting, my pet—Jirax freezes momentarily and shakes his head, silencing the other voice in his head with his own thoughts: Just your nerves. Got to be sure. Clean sweep, then you run like hell.

Jirax's suspicion is shot down when he sees two people kneeling on the ground, scrubbing the floor with brightly visible shock collars on their necks. The sight alone is enough of a reminder of his own time spent wearing one and enough to bring up a phantom weight upon his neck.

As he approaches the end of the hallway, he sees it's two women in dirty rags, with ruffled, tangled hair and sickly skin. He hears a muffled noise over the sound of his boots and as he gets closer, he realizes the woman with black hair and darker skin is sobbing as the other woman, with dull blonde hair and yellow skin urges her to remain quiet.

Jirax's throat tightens—he knows their situation all too well, and it's confirmed his fear that it's a Sith's ship. He knows there's nothing he can do for those slaves, nothing but ignore them. He doesn't pray for them or wish them a better future—those sentiments are ignorant and foolish. He knows their fate, and, if anything, hopes it ends soon. Freedom from slavery is a rare thing, and a false hope with a shock collar in the way.

As he's about to pass them, keeping his head up so as not to attract attention, the sobbing stops and instead one of the women reaches out and touches his boot, inspiring further scolding from the other woman. He sighs to himself and keeps his head high, he can't save them and whoever their master is, they're waiting for him.

"Jirax Danthan?"

Jirax stops walking and makes the cruel mistake of looking over his shoulder and down at the kneeling women. His breath escapes him and for a moment he's frozen, then the shaking starts, then he wants to vomit, and he steps back, removes his helmet to see it with his own eye, and he throws his helmet down onto the ground, immediately consumed with rage.

"Is this some kind of fuckin' joke?"

The dark haired woman stands on wobbly, frail legs and walks toward him, and Jirax shakes his head and growls for her to stay back. When she stops before him and touches his face, touches his scars, he knows it's true—it's his Safie, his so-called dead wife, truly alive, but no longer blind. In place of both of her eyes are cybernetic optical implants, black and red and painfully attached to her skull by an amateur physician he imagines.

"Now I know what happened. Why you came to me with a broken and marred face. I can see it so clearly in you, just as I sometimes see in myself on accidental occasions."

Jirax grabs her head and holds her firmly in his grip. "Are you saying she's alive? Who did this to you? Tell me!"

"She wanted you to believe we were dead," Safie's voice is hollow and bereft of emotion, far too drained and weak to show any further. "And we were, for a short time. Shorter than your disappearance. When I woke up, I could see, and I saw our little boy, our Vik'tur…he…"

Jirax doesn't want to know. He can already imagine.

"I thought it was a miracle that I could see after being blind all my life. But I was wrong. It was a sight no mother should see." Her optics look frantically over his features, and he can't make out her expression. "Raised to be durable slaves. Work animals, not attack dogs."

Jirax doesn't know what to say. He stops shaking and loosens his grip on her. In spite of Vexyl's machinations, the same ritual performed upon him, he doesn't know what to say out of empathy or support to help her. Instead, her lips curl into a wicked smile and she laughs hysterically.

"We were told to wait here for you. It's all a trap. All arranged. In exchange for your capture, I get freedom. I wanted you to come. I wanted you to see, so now you'll want revenge. Vexyl is dead, you made sure of that, but her master still lives. But you can't escape now."

Jirax glances between Safie and the other woman who's furiously cleaning away, who also has unwillingly undergone the same ritual. He's jerked out of it when he feels his blaster being removed from his holster and taken into Safie's hands.

It happens in a flash, and there's nothing he can say or do to stop it. She raises her head and the desperation is there in her unfeeling, metallic implants. The gun's barrel presses into her neck then she pulls the trigger and collapses before him, killed instantly from the blunt trauma.

"In the end, that's what we're driven to," the other woman says without looking up. "We betray the one's we loved. We do what we must in order to be the saved, not the drowned. We'll snap necks for a scrap of bread, we'll do as we're told in order to avoid the shock, however horrifying or disgusting.

"When she was approached by our lord to lay the trap, she agreed knowing you would be stunned, and she would be able to get close enough to get your gun. To our master it's a small price to pay for the capture of his greatest experiment.

"In the end we'll betray anyone and anything, because we're lab rats who've had someone pick into our brains and take out anything except our fear of pain and our distrust of others. In the end we're nothing but animals who want to survive or euthanize the pain."

Jirax's speechless as he stares down at the bloody mess that's already being cleaned up by the other slave. He doesn't resist when the other Imperial guards come to take him away—the boarding party that should have met him in the hangar deck.

"I think she realized what she had become. That's why she sobbed. But in the end, she wanted to save herself."

It's too late to resist. His final, clear thought is he hopes Mako and the others follow his orders and leave before it happens to them as well.